


Winter's King

by fireandblood44



Category: Original Work
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Beauty and the Beast Elements, Curses, Dark Fantasy, F/M, Fairy Tale Elements, Magic, Obsession, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-21 08:04:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21071621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fireandblood44/pseuds/fireandblood44
Summary: "Once upon a time there was a world draped all in winter, and the winter knew a king."Mara Donner has never seen the sun. Raised in one of the last scattered settlements of humanity, she has lived her life fearing, hating, and worshipping the fabled King of Winter: a being whose cursed magic not only permeates the world with cold and ice, but is said to have tucked the very Sun away from sight, forevermore.After Mara lays eyes on one of the King's creatures one night, a series of events is set in which she is brought to the King's own legendary court, a guest and prisoner of the mysterious, pale-eyed monarch and his intense but inexplicable interest in her. In addition to maneuvering the King and his games, Mara must survive his twisted court, where monsters and fanatics plot to oust her from the King's strange favor.But dark truths are uncovered as Mara learns to play the King's game, and soon she learns that the stakes aren't just her freedom -- but her soul.





	Winter's King

Mara cupped her hands too close above the dying fire. It burned, but the heat was too precious for her to care. Really, the pain was vivid to her in a way few things had ever been.

"He's claimed two more, they're saying." Her mother licked her cracked lips as she spoke, calloused fingers working deftly on another shirt for Mara. The one she wore was almost tatters, unfit protection from the world beyond their cabin. "The daughter of the blacksmith from Yondr. And a midwife's son, from Neare."

Her father shifted by the lone window in response, his chin perched on his fist as he stared out into the bleak white world. "But no declarators," he rumbled finally. "No farewell ceremonies, or even compensation. Really, he's stolen them."

Mara kept her eyes on the weakly dancing flames. She didn't want to be reminded of the ever-looming shadow that was their sovereign, whose mere mention never failed to bleed what light remained within her parents. Her mother especially was frantic of late, her hands restless and her mouth tight. She would not let Mara venture far from her, since the news had reached their village of the abductions.

"Our lord is angry," her mother whispered, and no sooner had she said the words than Mara's father stilled, his breath fogging against the glass of the window as he leaned near.

"Indeed," he said, and Mara pulled away at last from what remained of the fire to go and join him by the window, her stomach lurching at the sight of the freshly falling snow. It was as clear a sign as any. An omen.

"But _why?_" she asked, her voice a harsh crack that startled both of her parents. It had been some days since she last spoke. "Why is he angry? What have we done?"

The snow would fall and fall, and the world would remain the white waste that glared now beyond the window, unchanged in the eighteen years Mara had laid eyes on it. The knowledge made Mara's nails gouge at her blistered palms, made her chest tighten and her teeth grind. Suddenly she could not stand to look at it.

"Who can say?" Her father rumbled as she turned away, and it only made her angrier, his bleak dismay. In that moment he seemed no different than the werrabs he still sometimes managed to catch, hung limp by their long ears as they waited for death. The same dull light shone in his eyes.

It disgusted her, and Mara would've stormed out of the cabin in frustration were her mother not watching her so intently -- were the snow not falling steadily outside, an omen from their lord.

"Mara," her mother began, but Mara didn't want to hear it. She went instead to the one corner of the cabin that was hers, where sagging shelves stacked with wood-charms and yellowed books ringed a small pallet.

"I'm sorry," her mother said anyway as Mara slipped under the covers, back to them. Her breath billowed before her in a long white cloud, and she closed her eyes but the floor remained hard and icy beneath her. Her stomach was still empty.

Across the cabin her mother sighed. "This is the way of things," she murmured, as she had all Mara's life, and the only sound thereafter was the soft click of her needles.

Mara curled her burnt palms close to her chest. Her world was white and gray, snow and ash -- but in the darkness behind her eyelids burned a whirlwind of color: violent red and brilliant yellow and dancing orange. The colors, like the pain, were more real to her than anything, and urged her down into a sleep that was almost untroubled.

\----------------

When Mara woke, it was night.

She lifted her head to see the fire dead and her parents curled together in sleep across the cabin. Mara's eyes went to the window, where black yawned beyond the frosted glass.

She must have slept for some time. Rubbing at her stomach and the sharp pangs within it, Mara rose soundlessly from her pallet and went to the window. The moon was full, and the only thing illuminating the shoddily assembled cluster of cabins that made up her village.

It was still snowing. Mara put one brown hand to the sill, her chest tightening. The fall was light enough that they were in no immediate danger of being buried, but that was only if it stopped soon. One or two more days and they'd all be in danger.

Mara had heard of other villages being buried whole beneath their lord's displeasure. No one could ever tell her what the people had done to deserve it.

She lingered at the window, her breath clouding the glass. Mara paused, then raised her finger and drew the simplest of charms, a heart. Her father had taught her the little symbol of good fortune as his mother had taught him -- as every parent taught their children, here. It was the first charm she'd learned.

It was as Mara stood there appraising the charm that she became aware of it: a strange and tinkling sound, almost like the chimes hung on old Sheba's porch down-the-way. But this sound was distinct and echoing, unearthly. It filled her ears like water.

Mara stepped back from the window, but it was too late. She had already seen it. The ghostly chime rang in her skull as she watched the figure make its way through the uneven remnants of the single road that ran through their village.

Made of a light very like the moon's, the creature itself resembled the beast Strong Judos had once managed to drag from the woods, several years ago; a stag, her father had called it. The beast had been crowned with the same clawing, branch-like antlers as this one, and fed them all for many days after. Mara's stomach gave another stab of hunger as she watched the creature glide along.

It was not a stag, she knew.

Mara should've woken her parents. She didn't know why she hadn't. That unearthly chiming had grown louder, but her father's snores still floated across the cabin. If she woke them, and they saw it, there would be panic.

Wraiths like the one currently making its way through the village weren't supposed to bother such tiny settlements. Mara didn't know what it meant that the wraith had come, only thats its arrival boded poorly for them all.

She'd heard tales of the woe that followed the king's creatures, and as the stag neared her cabin the horror of its luminescent form finally sank in. Mara lurched back from the window and raced soundlessly on her hands and knees back to her pallet.

She pulled the covers to her chin and put her back to the window, her heart galloping against her chest. Their cabin like all the others was wreathed in protective bouquets and more powerful charms, but none of it would stand against the wraith. Its chime was in her skull, and now the air within the cabin was dropping from its usual deep chill to a cold that seemed to seize her very bones.

Mara had never felt its like. Even the depths of that lonely pond so long ago had not gripped her so viciously, and her jaw clenched hard against the memory, the cold.

Her father had stopped snoring. Now her mother's frightened breaths filled the silence, but Mara didn't move. She stared at the wall in front of her, at the faint light filtering into their cabin. It was coming from the window; from the stag looking in at them, through the glass.

That awful chime became suddenly deafening. It swelled in Mara's skull like savage wind, like blood and rot. She could have screamed with it -- would have clapped her hands over her ears -- but the stag's gaze scalded her back. She dared not move, nor think, nor breathe.

_Go away_, Mara thought wildly. _Go away, go away, go away._

The chiming stabbed behind her eyes, visceral and resounding. Like the cold, it gnawed at Mara's bones. She thought she'd come apart with it, and abruptly she did not care if the stag saw her cover her ears, did not care what it would do -- there was only the sound and the cold and her fury at them both, at the thrice-damned creature who had trespassed and brought this on them.

_GO AWAY!_ Mara might have screamed the words or merely wished them; she couldn't have said, only that she meant it with all her soul, and as if in answer darkness fell within the cabin. That awful chime cut finally to silence.

It happened so abruptly that Mara could only lay there, stunned, until cold hands seized her. They muffled her sharp intake of breath, and Mara caught only a glimpse of her mother's white-ringed eyes in the dark before she was tugged tight against her breast.

"Hush," her mother croaked in her ear, one hand curled tight in her dark hair. "Hush, child."

Really Mara was calmer than she should've been -- calmer than her mother -- but she clung back, anyway. She had never been so cold.

While she shivered violently her father crouched above them both, wide stare fixed to the window where the moonlight streamed in steadily. It was tainted now.

"He is among us," her father whispered, and though there could have been no other conclusion Mara squeezed her eyes shut anyway.

_Why?_ she might've demanded as she had earlier, when the fire's kiss had scorched her palms and she wasn't so afraid. _What have we done?_

But Mara didn't ask. It burned within her to no end, the knowledge that it didn't matter. The King of Winter could be as fickle as he was cruel, she had always been told, and he didn't need a reason to send his creatures among them -- to bury the village whole, if it so pleased him.

Innocent or guilty, every one of them was powerless. The knowledge sat like stones on Mara's chest; filled the cabin and the silence like ice water. Mara could've drowned in it.

She kept her eyes squeezed shut. They stayed like that till morning.


End file.
